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February 17, 2007
WSJ Tick-Tock on Apple's iPhone/Cingular Deal
The weekend WSJ has a tick-tock on Apple's deal for iPhone with Cingular. Some highlights:- Cingular's CEO only saw the iPhone for the first time two weeks before launch, and Steve Jobs seemingly didn't let him touch it
- Only three Cingular execs ever saw iPhone before launch
- Apple shares a portion of the monthly subscriber revenues
- Steve repeatedly told Cingular execs during negotiations that they would never understand the Web and entertainment the way Apple did
- Jobs first pitched iPhone to Cingular in early 2005
- Jobs was adamant from the start that it be a touchscreen device
- The Cingular deal was finalized in July of 2006
- Cingular network engineers were only allowed to test a dummy phone, nothing like the real thing
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They may not have been cut in on the development of the handset, but this all looks like a very good deal from Cingular's perspective - as they're not having to subsidise the handset. There's an intriguing article about the significance of the
iPhone pricing structure here:
http://www.robinontech.com/2007/02/12/the-iphones-real-significance/